Cosi si spiega il crollo delle banche
Quando un giornale del calibro del FT da dei numeri a caso, ossia sofferenze lorde e non nette (con EUR 350bn si mettone dentro tutte i NPE non solo i NPL) che poi sono coperte da garanzie si capisce perche' gli investitori vendano a piene mani...
Molto deludende questo articolo.
Renzi needs to sort out Italy?s struggling banks - FT.com
Renzi needs to sort out Italy’s struggling banks
Losses cannot be averted. The answer is to protect the vulnerable
Two years into his term of office, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, faces challenges on all fronts. His government is contending with sluggish economic growth and a European migrant crisis while waging constant battles with Brussels over public finances. The question that may yet derail the centre-left leader is the uncertainty engulfing the country’s banks.
This is not a new issue. In the years since the financial crisis, successive governments have procrastinated over the rapid build-up of bad loans in the country’s inefficient financial sector. Reform has been promised but little of any significance has been achieved.
The scale of the challenge has assumed forbidding proportions.
The €350bn of non-performing loans sitting on bank balance sheets represents nearly a fifth of all lending and a similar proportion of Italian gross domestic product. This is by far the highest in the G7 leading industrial nations.
It threatens the stability of some of Italy’s important financial institutions. The extent of the problem can be divined by comparing a bank’s troubled assets with the total capital available to cover them, including loss provisions — the Texas ratio. Based on 2014 data compiled by The Banker, Italy’s largest 10 banks were on average above 100 per cent, with Monte dei Paschi di Siena at a startling 164 per cent.
Italy’s big stock of bad loans is not only a growing concern for investors, who have been selling bank shares heavily since the start of the year, but it curbs the extension of new loans and thus diminishes the chances of an economic recovery. Most worryingly, it holds back the possibility of a sector-wide restructuring — something that is urgently needed in the case of Italy’s fragmented regional banks.
Mr Renzi understands the need for action. He has passed a law designed to promote mergers between the ten largest “popolari” banks. He has also grasped the necessity of bolstering weaker institutions to make deals palatable to those with stronger balance sheets.
Where Mr Renzi has fallen short is in producing a blueprint that both cleans up loan books and lives within EU rules. He initially wasted energy trying to persuade the commission to allow him to create a taxpayer-funded bad bank to hoover up the losses — a measure that would constitute illegitimate state aid. More recently he has struck a deal with Brussels that allows Rome to issue guarantees that help banks sell loans to third parties such as hedge funds. Given the EU’s prohibition on subsidy, it is hard to see what good this half-baked proposal can do.
Mr Renzi’s fundamental difficulty is that any effective solution requires politically painful action he is unwilling to take.
To resolve the problems at overstretched banks, he may need to bail in bondholders, whose ranks may include small retail investors. This is precisely what happened last autumn when the government decided to rescue four failing regional banks.
The premier’s aversion to going down this road again is understandable but he cannot allow small investors to hold up the strengthening of the system. Instead he should go ahead with whatever resolutions are needed, while taking steps to protect the vulnerable. This could be achieved by exempting retail bond holdings below a certain monetary value from the bail-in deal.
None of this is easy for the prime minister. If there is good news it is that he still has enough political capital to make hard decisions. The next general election may still be more than two years away. He must set his face against the temptations of inertia. Italy’s bad debt problem is too big to ignore.